International Online Training Program On Intractable
Conflict

Protection of Minority Rights

Minorities frequently find democratic, majority rule processes to be extremely
threatening. The danger is that the majority will simply use its power to win elections,
and then take away the rights of the minority. (Minorities may be defined on
religious, racial, ethnic, gender, or political differences which arise among all
groups.) This is why effective mechanisms for protecting minority rights are essential to
the success of any democratic dispute resolution process.

Usually, these mechanisms involve constitutional protections of rights of all
citizens. Parliamentary systems, which give minority groups representation, rather
than giving complete power to the group that wins 51% of the vote is also a way to
increase the power of minority groups. Another important mechanism for protecting
minority rights is the use of political subdivisions. Here the idea is to divide the
larger society into a number of highly homogeneous political subdivisions without
significant minority groups. These divisions are then granted as much autonomy and home
rule as possible. In theory, this does much to eliminate the minority group problem.
Unfortunately, it only works in situations where there is a clear geographic separation
between groups who are involved in serious conflict. In most cases, contending groups are
so intermingled that the subdivision approach is not workable. In these cases other
measures are needed to protect minority rights.